Part of the problem is that Perl doesn't have as strong of a type system. (Is is an int or a string, or is is both? The runtime certainly doesn't know.)
It was also symmetric in 5.10 (changed in 5.10.1), which didn't help.
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The major mistake was not making it experimental from the start.
(The smartmatch feature is why marking things as experimental is now a thing.)
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If it is carefully designed, it should prove to be useful just like it has in Raku.